An evening with Miss E.

Miss E., E stands for "Emboutie" here, and I met by accident, literally: I bumped into her car a few years ago. She is petite, has very short hair and a big smile full of teeth. I took her to lunch while we were filling the forms. I think that what brought us close was our common way to react to stress: with a cheer. Apart from that, there was not much. She introduced me to Flemish contemporary literature (translated, of course ;-), I introduced her to independent Nordic cinema (translated too;-). It went on for a few months. It was fun, went nowhere fast, and eventually arrived. Once this phase was over, we used to meet accidentally at cultural events and lost touch two or three years ago.
I lost her phone around that time, and my number had changed too, so her call came as a surprise.

So we met at one of our old haunts, and did what I do best: I listened. What she had to say was quite unimportant: she had a garden party a few weeks ago, wanted to invite me, was unable to reach me, met a common acquaintance and got my new number. We talked about the years gone by, her funny family, her job, her pets and her new house. Apart from that, all had already been said long ago, and none of us apparently wanted a rerun. Apparently being the keyword here for reserved persons such as us, I had to make myself subtly clear. As I do not usually do subtle, all I can hope for is not to have given confused signals. All in all, it was a somewhat pleasant evening.